A little bit of help with Carbon Fiber Texture.
Hey everyone, Long time lurker, First time making a thread or anything.
I'm working on a Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 and I have gotten to the point where I am trying to texture a certain part of the hood as Carbon Fiber. I'm having quite a bit of difficulty as I'm not too sure on how to approach it, right now I'm using a placeholder texture I created in photoshop (gradient rectangles with a similar spec map)
However it still doesn't look right, I have a Carbon Fiber iphone case here with me now and plenty of references, I'm just not sure on how to best approach it, so I figured I'd come and ask here for help
Here is the object with the current placeholder texture
And here is the result I am aiming to get (yet unsure how to approach it)
Also for those wondering, this is more of a showcase piece, it's not made for engines or anything, just a high poly.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated! thanks in advance!
I'm working on a Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 and I have gotten to the point where I am trying to texture a certain part of the hood as Carbon Fiber. I'm having quite a bit of difficulty as I'm not too sure on how to approach it, right now I'm using a placeholder texture I created in photoshop (gradient rectangles with a similar spec map)
However it still doesn't look right, I have a Carbon Fiber iphone case here with me now and plenty of references, I'm just not sure on how to best approach it, so I figured I'd come and ask here for help
Here is the object with the current placeholder texture
And here is the result I am aiming to get (yet unsure how to approach it)
Also for those wondering, this is more of a showcase piece, it's not made for engines or anything, just a high poly.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated! thanks in advance!
Replies
-specular map might help (didn't do this myself), looking at the reference you can see that that actual carbon layer the little rectangles have the most spec.
but the most important thing that I found was the actual coating/top layer, that gives it that extremely glossy look.
have a look at xoliulshader, and using the reflections there, don't have to use cubemap reflections, just the normal soft or hard reflections (and just putting the specular highlight to 0) with only a diffuse texture already makes it look quite good.
getting that part right is like 80% of getting it to look right imo.
those scales are quite tiny in real life, but I do find that you can leave them a bit bigger in 3D, or else you are just left with a crazy Moir
thank you for the advice!
yeah I realized it was probably mostly down to the specular, but the only problem I'm really having is getting that texture to look realistic. So all those tiny streaks and stuff would have to be there, I've been struggling with it most of the day yesterday and I just didn't really know how to go about replicating that result.
I'll give that a go, I'll post the results when I do.
with layers I just meant, how the material is built in real life.
You should see it this way, like with carpaint there is bottom layer with a certain specular (the scales), and a top layer wich is a sort of coating wich is very glossy/reflective and gives it that distinct look.
You can't really do it "physically" with making 2 meshes, but there are 2 options:
-First get the reflective/glossy properties of that glossy layer right by adding reflections, and then afterwards you can try to fake the bottom layer by adding a spec map.
-If you aren't going to be doing this realtime, there are materials in max wich basicly give you the option to add 2 seperate highlights.
making it actual 2 seperate meshes maybe could work, but I'v never seen anyone do it that way before
So I've taken some of the suggestions from here and this is what I've come to, I'm still not at the part where I will be using the xiluil shader, Most probably because the rendering won't be done with that (most likely mental ray or vray)
However important thing for me right now is to see how I can get the right maps for the surface, it's quite tricky as I'm not 100% on the approach or even how to do it for that matter.
I've made it so that the horizontal-facing rectangles are darker in the spec than the vertical ones, that way I can get the result closer to the reference, however it still doesn't look quite right. Still not 100% sure on why.
As always, thanks for your help guys! it's helping me a lot!
any help you can offer does me a world of good!
you're right, I've been playing around with it... how does this look?
http://www.cgnotebook.com/wiki/Mental_ray_for_Maya_mi_car_paint_phen
Your carbon is mirrored over the center line. The only way you would be able to get this in the real world is to have two pieces of carbon cloth meet at the middle which would be about next to impossible.
Another thing to remember is what carbon fiber actually is. It is tiny threads of carbon bundled together and then woven into a fabric like cloth. Below is a basic....very basic understanding of how carbon works.
The black lines and dots are the woven bundles of carbon. The blue box is the polyester resin or epoxy that glues it together. This polyester resin or epoxy is the highly reflective finish. Because it is so clear the bundles of carbon will reflect light (red lines) and so will the polyester (green line)
Wow that's so awesome! thank you for going through that!
And yes! you are certainly right, the Carbon fiber on my mesh is completely mirrored along the middle. This is because I only unwrapped one half of the surface and then mirrored it. After this is all sorted, I was planning on collapsing them and separating them so that the texture continues like in the reference.
however for now I'm just trying to get the maps for the Carbon Fiber to look right.
Yeah I played around with mental ray materials quite a bit in the past, I'll give it a shot! Thanks!
The reference image looks like carbon fibre with a layer of perspex or some other kind of plastic over the top - maybe to keep it out of the weather or easier to clean or something.
The specularity is consistent across the surface, but the different segments catch the light at slightly different angles so you tend to see that checkerboard typed pattern in the highlights. I'm not sure exactly what the best way to simulate that would be.
You are correct when you use carbon fiber as you described. However, if you were to continue adding additional coats of epoxy or resin you would eventually fill in the bumpiness (texture) of the carbon and achieve the high gloss look. The part shown in the reference image is a molded part and not carbon with a separate plastic part over it. When using a mold, you first spray a couple coats of resin. While that is curing the carbon cloth is laid into the mold and additional coats of of resin are spread over it. When the part is pulled from the mold you will have a high gloss part with carbon showing through.
As Riptyde said, robotics and car carbon fiber sheets do not receive the same finish. Those on cars have more coats and polishing, resulting in a multi-layered material.
Since I'mn trying to learn UDK and expand my skill set, I tried to do a CF material on it, and Im putting it below for reference/discussion. Sorry about the moire, the UDK mipmap was f**ing it up, as the maps would blur considerably, so I removed it. If any one can help on that as well, I think the OP will need some info on that.
I believe that although this was done in UDK, the kind of setup can be the same on any renderer. I tried to do a diffuse texture, mixed with a fresnel to kinda give the black rim. Then added a reflection map, simulating what would be the glossy layer.
The specular is mapped and as already highlighted by other members, very sharp.
Here are the maps I've used.
If you are doing this on Vray, check out its Blend Material to achieve multi-coats, in 3dsMax alone you have Shellac.
Hope this helps you out.
all the best,